Wood is not just a material for buildings. It is a catalyst for wellness. New studies show that incorporating woodwork into hospital and care center designs aids the recovery process, reduces stress, and improves mood.

How Wood Improves Wellbeing
According to Dr. Marjut Wallenius from the University of Tampere, Finland, wood in elderly service centers and hospitals encourages well-being psychically as well as in mind.

She challenges architects and designers to allow visibility of wood in interiors. Its presence has stress-reducingised effects that are felt like nature. Self-reported questionnaire studies have shown that wood really affects people’s behavior positively, especially in care environments.

One case study in an elderly service center pointed out that the wooden interiors improved interaction among the residents and made them more engaged with their surroundings. For example, even a couple of wooden trays in dining rooms could spark better social connection and attention.

What Works in Reality
Inheritance; for example, buildings constructed from wood have remarkable prospects for neurology clinics in Japan. Patients introduced into these environments really testified to an uplifting experienced mood and recovery pace. Solid wood opens the indoor humidity to the outside, increasing the air quality around one hundred times better for allergy and asthma patients.

An International Exhibition of Evidence
Norway, Austria, Japan, Canada, and Denmark conducted health-related research regarding wood within the health and learning environments. Norway discovered that hospital rooms that have numerous wooden panelling with a great many windows are the most soothing.

Wooden interiors in classrooms at schools display reduced stress levels among students. Morning stress spikes measured distinctly by pulse rates, quickly disappeared and did not return in wooden classrooms. Stress levels were average and continued throughout the day in normal classrooms.

Wood Type Differentiation

These effects, however, Dr. Wallenius states, are apparently not features of every variety of wood but of the real ones; no such effects occur under synthetic wood, by which, consequently, the latter is also inferior in terms of sleep and recovery from stress compared to the first.

Indeed, the wood somehow tends to create a very peaceful and harmonizing environment that makes it suitable for places with high human density for long hours: hospitals, offices, schools, daycare centers.

But from here on, we’d better research more in this area; the message is already getting clearer: it’s not only about space but indeed life.